Andy Losik's Elementary STEM Scope, Sequence, and Yearly Planning Guide - Now Free!

 

With 30 years of insight and experience in elementary science and STEM, Andy Losik provides a grade-by-grade guide to planning a full year of K-4 STEM. With segments of the year dedicated to nature-based exploration and other parts focused on engineering, the guide provides Next Generation Science Standards, the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) Standards, and 16 sample suggested activities per grade level. Grade-appropriate technology apps and activities begin in kindergarten and build a series of skills students use to capture their world, amplify their depth of knowledge, and share their learning. This guide is designed to provide a framework and foundation for bringing a comprehensive STEM program to any elementary school.

Now on TPT.    FREE!

1:1 #SneakChat : Chromebooks, iPads, Running Shoes...It's all the same

Michigan district puts the skids on sneaker initiative.

The following is a fictitious "what if?" account of what usually happens when educators are blinded by the notion that 1:1 solves everything. It was originally posted in September of 2013...and still rings true.

What was initially hailed as a groundbreaking effort by the Rivermont Public School district (Mich.) to fight childhood obesity is now being re-examined and possibly moth-balled by school administrators over concerns of student mis-use. When students arrived at the district's three schools twenty-five minutes north of Grand Rapids this September, each was issued a new pair of Saucony running shoes in the nation's first ever 1:1 sneaker initiative. The district received a special mention on Good Morning America and a framed, hand-written letter of congratulations from First Lady Michelle Obama hangs in the foyer of each building.

Less than a month into the new school year, the district has slammed on the brakes and each teacher is being asked to collect the athletic shoes and store them in a closet until further notice. The holdup you ask?  Apparently the kids are having too much fun in them.

"Our grand vision was that students would use the sneakers for a school-wide fitness program that is guided by a rigorous curriculum of lap running and agility training throughout the day," stated superintendent Eli Tanis. "Our teachers are coming to us and telling us that the kids have no interest in these activities and instead are using the shoes for their own personal activities."

"Never before have we seen so much spontaneous running, noise, or such large groups of roaming mobs playing tag at recess. It can get terribly stressful," said first grade teacher Susan Vanderslice who has been at the same position for 31 years. "Before the shoes were just given to the children without any formal teacher training the playground was much calmer. Children simply milled around. It was very easy to maintain control."

After talking with a few students whose families asked that their identity be concealed to avoid any problems with staff at school, most kids don't see what they are doing wrong.

"They gave us these sweet shoes," says Fifth Grader (we'll call) Jake. "I couldn't wait to get on the court at recess and work on the cross-over dribble I have been perfecting this summer. Our teacher won't even let us wear the shoes outside though because he is afraid they will get dirty or something. He only lets us carry them to the track, put them on to run laps, take them off, and then carry them back inside. Running laps feels like doing penmanship."

Jake's parents echo their son's sentiments. "It seems like they are really missing the forest for the trees. They seem so focused on limiting what the kids do in the shoes. Shouldn't they just encourage any activity and movement at all? Take the time to teach the kids new games and give them time to just enjoy being active, whether that is outside when the weather is nice or inside once winter comes. We think that should be the ultimate goal, building healthy habits."

Rivermont curriculum director Shirley Wolverton defends the district's approach. "We have to insure growth. If we simply let the students play whatever they want in the shoes then there is no way to guarantee teachers will meet the benchmarks we have prescribed. If our lap numbers don't increase, our staff will have failed. The only way to increase a student's ability to run laps is to run more laps. "

A meeting is scheduled for Monday night at the school's board room where a sub-committee has been formed to investigate what modifications might be made to the program.

"We hope to have some answers quickly," Superintendent Tanis explains. "My biggest fear is that we will wait too long and the students will have all outgrown the shoes by the time we return them. We are also missing valuable lap-time on the track. Students need to know though that there is a difference between serious school work and the taxpayers of this community aren't financing just play."

Thankfully the above account is fictitious. There is no Rivermont, Michigan but unfortunately  this kind of thinking is far too prevalent in education. This silly post was the mental fruit cultivated by my hearing that Los Angeles Unified School District is temporarily moth-balling its one billion dollar 1:1 iPad efforts because students have easily hacked the devices' security controls.

Certain school districts seem so worried that students or in many cases staff will use a device for something other than "school work". We are not talking about accessing adult content here, but doing things like connecting with the rest of  the world through social media or making a multimedia project of vacation photos. To me, any time on the device that is not malicious or obviously inappropriate is learning. It is learning to use a tool to communicate and create. It is building comfort and efficiency within the operating system. The more you use it, the better you become.  (Author's Note: I am pumping the brakes on my own thinking here as it has evolved in the 5 years since I originally wrote this and especially in light of my recent post on Chromebook use. While still a believer that play equals better understanding of a device, we need to make sure we are smart about the activities and how we are using the time with the devices. We can design fun experiences that are learning-specific...but a moderate amount of free time is still okay now and then.)

Allowing kids to create content they are passionate about makes it all the more motivating for them to create a similar type of project on something being studied in the classroom. The same is true with giving every kid a pair of sneakers. Running laps isn't the only way to increase the ability to run laps.

DiscoveringFarmland.com: 7 Tools For Teaching Where That Thanksgiving Feast Came From

As a huge chunk of our population sits down tomorrow and eats way too much, how many will think of the hours, dollars, sweat, and luck that went into producing the bounty in front of them? Probably not many.

Discovery Education and the United State Farmers and Ranchers Alliance have teamed up to help change that through a number of teaching and learning resources at DiscoveringFarmland.com.

Through video and print resources, the site is broken into four lessons (45-60 minutes each) that explore a wide array of farming and ranching topics that are important to not only the sustainability of the industry but also our food supply and the cultural heritage of farming and ranching that has been a part of America since its first settlers.

You might also really strike a chord with one or many of your students who are already passionate about farming or ranching like my former student and Hamilton (MI) Middle Schooler Nate Freyhof, "What got me interested in hobby farming was having a good environment and having fun playing outside instead of sitting inside all day. I also think gardening and training or working with animals is fun to do. It is sometimes good to have technology around like tractors to pull a plow or dig up something."

Steve Dembo recently detailed on the Discovery Education Blog some of the resources available and that the project is based around the award winning documentary Farmland by James Mol.

Here are 7 great things about teaching with the Discovering Farmland site.

1. The videos and the lessons really put a human face on farming and ranching. This is done visually but one whole lesson focuses untangling stereotypes.


2. The four lessons fit nicely into a variety of units. Teachers can spread it out to where they spend an hour per week on top of their prescribed curriculum. Think of it like Google 20% time where you step away from "what has to get done" for a little bit to supplement with projects based on interest or that might be especially impactful. Teachers could do two lessons a week and be done in two weeks or maybe full week is dedicated to a deep dive through the entire set of lessons.


3. Resources provided make these units ready to roll out, even if the teacher knows nothing about farming or ranching.
   
   
   
   • Teacher guide for each lesson
   
   
   • Student activity sheet for each lesson
   
   
   • Formative assessment exit ticket or activity for each lesson
   
   
   • Video snippets of the Farmland movie to support each lesson
   
   
   • Web links to extend the research and learning for each lesson
   
   
   
   


4. All lessons are vocabulary rich with words that fit into science, social studies, and technology.


5. Even though each lesson is well designed, each can be modified to meet more personal or curricular needs. For example, an economics class could research where its county ranks in terms of agricultural production or what the taxable value is on a 40 acre plot of farmland.


6. Discovering Farmland transports students who may have never left their own urban city limits to a completely unknown and almost foreign seeming part of our world. The virtual visit is one of the truly transformative things educational technology can do and this site and resources are perfect for creating those learning opportunities.


7. There are great resources already in place but there is still more to come from Discovery and the USRFA. Both are committed to showing not only how important our agricultural heritage is but how there are exciting high-tech careers to be had in farming and ranching. There is no food without farming and there is no farming without great science, technology, engineering, and math skills.

Somebody somewhere grew the potatoes, the turkeys, the cranberries, even the cinnamon for the apples sauce we will be feasting on tomorrow. Why not use the resources in Discovering Farmland when you return to the classroom and challenge your students to find out more about who and where our food comes from?

 

#Sketchnotes | Doodling that really helps you remember

If you went back to all of my notebooks from high school and college you would notice a lot of doodling. It wasn't random though. It was a series of pictures I created to help me remember more deeply the content being presented. There might be a crude White House next to something that was supposed to be the Washington Monument as we were learning about the Executive Branch. You'd probably find a lot of flames and snow flakes in my Chemistry notes as I tried to keep straight whether certain elements exploded or froze when they reacted with one another.

What was once perceived as random scrawlings or worse yet time wasting is proving to be an effect way for learners of all ages to help remember material more effectively.

Seeing some of the great stuff Karen Bosch was doing with sketchnotes during the 2015 MACUL conference made me realize I had been on to something since the mid 1980's. Below are slides from the introductory presentation she gives on sketchnotes.

Digital Sketchnotes 101 from Karen Bosch

Susan Bowdoin wrote this past September on the Discovery Education blog about sketchnotes as an instructional strategy. Personally I like how she ties sketchnoting into the research of Robert Marzano that shows non-linguistic representation plays a powerful role in making learning stick.

Visual or graphic note taking, also called Sketchnoting, is gaining greater popularity as a strategy for increasing engagement in lectures, seminars and video presentations. When sketchnoting, learners use visual means to analyze information, make comparisons and develop analogies to better understand and communicate what they’ve learned. This requires higher level thinking. It is also directly related to Robert Marzano’s research on the significant positive affects that nonlinguistic representations have on student achievement.

Read all of Susan's tips on SOS: Sketchnotes at the Discovery Education blog. She not only provides practical strategies for implementing the strategy but also delivers some app suggestions for making this digital.

Wow, and to think all of the mean looks I got from Mr. Stuyver in Trigonometry for "doodling" too much were all for naught. Those weren't doodles; they were sketchnotes. Maybe if he hadn't discouraged my use of non-linguistic representation, I would have remembered more from his class.

Sketchnote on, my friends.

#cuerockstar Teach Wild Resources

We had a great adventures at Rock Star Saugatuck and Rock Star MASSCUE playing "Oh Deer", crossing the Kalamazoo River on the only operating hand-crank chain ferry in the U.S., and climbing Mt. Baldhead's 302 steps, and digging into the Google Cultural Institute. Better yet were the great conversations we had about effectively bringing nature into your curriculum and taking kids out into it. Here are resource links.

Project Wild - Find more information on the program and link to trainings and curriculum
Project Wild and Project Aquatic materials listed on eBay.

The Nature Connection by Clare Walker Leslie



 

Easel.ly - Great infographic maker

Canva - Create beautiful graphics to show findings.

Google Cultural Institute - Take students to museums all over the world and have them create collections of the ways animals have been portrayed in art over the years.

Trimble Sketchup - Have your students build their own Mt. Baldy steps or recreate structures you discover with them. It's as real as math gets.

Walkmeter App

GPS Altimeter App

BirdCaller App

Leaf Snap

[caption id="attachment_1086" align="alignleft" width="717"] On top of Mt. Baldhead, all covered in S.T.E.A.M.[/caption]

EdTech and the Rock and Roll Church

Here is another repost from a couple of years ago but it's one of my favorite pieces I have ever written. Original Post from May of 2011

Today at my kitchen sink, while cleaning up some breakfast dishes, I had one of those “ah ha” moments. It was as if it was sent from above.

Here is the idea. Think about what educational technology and the “contemporary” Christian church service have in common. Whether you are a believer or not, it is hard to deny the similarities.

Over the course of the last twenty years, many churches have seen big changes to the typical Sunday morning worship formats they offer. For years, churches were seeing a decline in numbers and an apathy amongst its congregation. When asked why, many members…and especially young ones…said they just weren’t getting a personal connection with the traditional singing of hymns and congregational responses. Sound familiar? What are educators hearing when they ask today’s student who seems disinterested in school and apathetic? It’s pretty much the same thing. These students are struggling to make the personal connection with the traditional way schools operate and present content.

What did churches do? They listened to those they aim to serve and they tailored their offerings….well, some did. For many of those who did, they saw a return of parishioners and renewed interest. According to a Crosswalk.com article, a 2009  study found 64% of churches that updated their services or created contemporary offerings saw their numbers grow.

Education should be paying attention and following some of the same principles when it comes to integrating technology.

Principle #1: If we don’t meet their needs, we will lose students. If these churches hadn’t gotten creative and realized the legitimacy of the desires, church goers would do just that…go, and take their tithes and offerings with them. With the increase of “schools of choice” laws and the pushing of vouchers by some politicians, it is just as easy for families who don’t feel the personalized connection to take their state foundation grants down the road with them to a different district. The proper use of educational technology can tailor that education and create that personalized connection. We in education need to listen.

Principle #2: Meet those we aim to serve on their schedules. Churches began to meet members more on members’ schedules and not just on the church’s schedule. Many of the “mega churches” offer Saturday night services or Sunday evening services for those that just can’t roll out of bed or have mid-Sunday morning conflicts. They are also using technology to stream church via the Internet or they create podcasts of their services. Educational technology has amazing abilities to break down the same dependencies schools have on rigid scheduling and limited course offerings. Content, courses, and lectures can all go online and on portable devices. It can be streamed over the Internet and classes can meet in the virtual spaces of wikis and classroom management systems like Moodle. Schools can be creative and unlock learning time from the 8 to 3 mold, just as churches are unlocking worship from 11:oo to noon on Sunday morning.

Principle #3 Remain true to your core content. Even though there may now be a five piece rock and roll band up by the altar, the music is still about the same God that “What a friend we have in Jesus” is. The service may look vastly different from the outside but it’s the same truths that are being pursued. It’s the same Scriptures being studied. Philosophically for me, educational technology is a way to pursue academic truths and develop deeper understanding of the content to be learned. I am a firm believer that the liberal arts must be cherished and that classical studies teaches the contemporary human to inquire and think on a higher level. Now harness those pursuits to the tools we have technology wise and the discovery is ramped up 100 fold. Bringing the classics into the context of today makes it personal to kids.  GoogleLitTrips.com is a perfect example of taking great literature and exploring it through Google Earth…relating sometime ancient locales to our contemporary world. Even Steve Jobs during the launch of the iPad2 heralded this pursuit. “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough. It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities that yields the results that makes our hearts sing.”

What neither education nor the rock and roll church can lose sight of is the human relationship factor. Isn’t that mission of both really? Technology can do a lot of things for both, but if we are not fostering respectful inter-personal relationships in either space then we are missing the boat and no matter how slickly produced, the messages will never find their targets. Computers can never replace great teachers and podcasts can’t replace exceptional preachers.

The Framers and Founders of America called for a separation of Church and State. It doesn’t mean the two can’t learn from one another though.

The Easiest Way To Learn Fractions With LEGOs - YouTube

Yep, it's that easy. Cutting Lego blocks like that isn't. Great video that will stick with your kids. Thanks @scottsy for sharing.

The Easiest Way To Learn Fractions With LEGOs - YouTube.

Tackling Technical Text with Paper Airplanes at Instructables com

Tackling Technical Text with Paper Airplanes at Instructables.com 







The site is actually loaded with easy to build, fun stuff like paper airplanes...some simple, some complex. Many of the instructions are written by kids too.

The second-graders dove right in to the many offerings. Some had to overcome the fact the task would take some thinking, trial and error, and perseverance. Overall, we ended up experiencing a lot of learning and having a lot of fun as this relentless winter raged on.

5 Easy Tech Projects for Kids to Give Thanks

Here are five technology infused ways for kids to show their thankfulness as we head into Thanksgiving here in the U.S. Canadian friends can file this one away until next Fall.

The great thing about each of these activities is that thoughts and ideas are not only shared with the whole class but also an authentic audience across the web. Publish a link in a newsletter or on a class blog and invite the outside world into your classroom and the hard work of your students.

1. Blog Comments: One of the fastest ways for kids to give thanks is on a class blog. Create a post as a writing prompt and then open up the comments to your students. In Blogger and other platforms there are various settings to allow anonymous comments but have students sign each one with a first name. It is a good idea to watch each new addition closely to ward off any pre-holiday hi-jinx or silliness. It is neat to see all of the ideas in one group spot. Students can also comment on each other's thoughts.



2. Build a Shared Class Slide Deck: If your students all have Google Apps for Education accounts, you can create a presentation that has a blank slide for every student. Just share the deck with the entire class and each student can work in his or her own little corner of the collaborative project. It is a proactive idea to designate each slide ahead of time with a student name or class number. This greatly reduces students interfering with one another. Each can create a slide that has textual and visual expressions of what makes them thankful. The finished deck can be embedded on a class webpage for everyone to easily view.

[caption id="attachment_881" align="alignleft" width="251"] Haiku Deck helps you makes stunning slides.[/caption]

3. Get Artsy with Haiku Deck: Students will need an account in Haiku Deck, but they can do that with their Google Accounts as well. Haiku Deck is available free as an iOS app or on the web at HaikuDeck.com. There isn't the option of all collaborating on the same deck of slides like in Google Apps, but there are a number of sharing options that easily let students email links or embed codes to a teacher so all of the work can get compiled in one publicly accessible spot. Students can upload their own background photos or select from the beautiful free collection that Haiku Deck offers.

4. Create a Pic Collage: This a great free app available on iPad and Android devices. It has an easy to use interface for dragging and dropping a number of pictures into a collage and accenting with text and borders. A number of frames are available that makes the maneuvering even easier. Non-linguistic representations of concepts are often the most powerful connections to really understanding something. A collage showing thankfulness really gets kids thinking about what they have special in their lives, but also how to effectively communicate that visually. Collages can be saved as images and then posted by the teacher.

5. Let Them Show it with ShowMe: ShowMe is a great whiteboard recording app for the iPad. Students can upload a picture or draw one and then create a voice over track telling for what they are thankful. One advantage that ShowMe has over some of the other whiteboard apps is that if logged into a teacher account, the quick movies generated can all be easily posted to webspace that ShowMe provides.

None of these techniques take a tremendous amount of tech skills and don't require a lot of planning on the teacher's part. Give one a spin this week and you are likely to wind up thankful you did.

Great Story Starters with "The Big Picture" from The Boston Globe

Thanks to Ben Rimes for sharing this great resource from the Boston Globe. These pictures are fabulous to use as writing prompts, story starters, and non-verbal representations of academic vocabulary words. I am putting them to use today.

 

The Big Picture - The Boston Globe.

Teachers learn a ton at conferences. Kids can too.

This past Monday I had the opportunity to attend the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association conference in Lansing with thirty-five Hamilton High School journalism students and their teachers Mark Behnke and Kevin Weed.

Not only did I pick up some great ideas for assessing my own students' work and supporting scholastic journalism efforts, I also realized that students enjoy learning in the conference format as well.

Students from the school's newspaper "The Thunderhawk" and sports media class "Covering Hawkeyes Sports" share their reflections on getting out of the building for a day and engaging in some self-directed learning.

 

Hamilton High School attends MIPA Journalism Conference - YouTube.

Use Google Slides as an online Academic Vocabulary Notebook

In Hamilton, part of our district and building improvement process includes increasing student academic vocabulary capacity.

John Marzano has laid out six steps for teachers to follow when introducing new content-specific words.

 

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="694"] Marzano's six steps  - fhsdvocabulary.pbworks.com[/caption]

In my elementary technology classes, third and fourth graders are performing step 4 now in Google Drive with a digital notebook.  All I did was adapt one of Marzano's notebook templates and created it in Google Slides. I made the deck public and kids created their own copies and shared them with me.

Kids write the definition in their own words, they rate their understanding of the word, and also find a non-linguistic representation of the word. The template I created makes it really easy for the kids to add and record their knowledge of the words.

Doing it this way takes advantage of all of the benefits of Google documents like ubiquitous access and sharing.

Find and create a copy of the slide deck here.  Feel free to use it and share it.

[caption id="attachment_801" align="alignleft" width="866"] Academic Vocabulary Template[/caption]

 

Detroit Pistons finally do something right - teaching kids literacy concepts

As a long-time Detroit Pistons fan I have shaken my head at many of their recent management decisions and recent woeful seasons on the court.

The franchise got something exceptionally right recently though. Broadcaster Greg Kelser hosts a couple of videos aimed at improving literacy, specifically students' abilities to stake and back up claims and understanding that every writer brings a different point of view.

The videos were produced as part of the team's outreach into public education for schools in Oakland County, Michigan - the area surrounding the Piston's Auburn Hills arena and headquarters.





 

Flocabulary and Common Sense Media team up on Digital Citizenship

We use Flocabulary.com at Blue Star Elementary to help develop student academic vocabulary knowledge via Marzano's Six Steps. Kids love the catchy hip hop songs and animated videos.

Here is a great one that Flocabulary produced in association with Common Sense Media to teach the top rules kids....or any of us should remember when posting to social media.

The great thing about anything Flocabulary does is that it sticks with kids. They really get it.

 

Insanely Great Science Journals from 1:1 Android 1st Graders

The first graders in Kristi Zoerhof's class at Bentheim Elementary each have their own Sony Android tablet.

This spring the class studied the metamorphosis of caterpillars into butterflies. Kristi sent the students daily pictures via Chirp and then by using the Skitch app, each student annotated his or her observations. Students then built beautiful journals of the entire process in the Book Creator app.

By using real pictures and annotation tools, students were able to create truly scientific products as opposed to the old cartoonish drawings they used to make in their science journals. The depth of exploration and knowledge displayed is fascinating.

A year ago, Kristi tried this project as part of a pilot with Sony. That class organized findings in Pic Collage. Employing Book Creator has taken it to a completely new level as the app creates an ePub readable on many electronic devices.  To share it here I had to convert the .ePub in Zamzar to a PDF and upload it to Issuu.

 

Below is one student's beautiful work. Original .ePub to download

Thanks Flocabulary!

This year in Hamilton, building students' academic vocabulary has been a primary focus.

Thanks to everyone at Flocabulary.com for your fabulous videos that have made learning so much fun. Here is a little remix of Double Trouble to show you just how much fun kids at Blue Star Elementary had rocking out during lunchtime.

Congration, you have great voice.

Do you really want to see where our over-emphasis on developing  "voice" in writing and our lack of emphasis on spelling and grammar is taking us?

[caption id="attachment_535" align="alignleft" width="300"] image via @crylenol on Twitter[/caption]

Look no further than the Walmart bakery.  Spelling matters. Grammar matters. This cake artist conveyed a lovely message, a really heartfelt one and even added a new word to the lexicon. Unfortunately that gets lost in the grammar.

I hope it tasted good.  It seems like spelling and grammar ought to garner a deep discount off of the $15 asking price.

Going Big - Caine's Arcade Style

[caption id="attachment_532" align="alignleft" width="225"] Willis Tower, Caine's Arcade Style[/caption]

Inspired by all of the creativity and ingenuity involved in the building of Caine's Arcade, I took our annual research of the World's tallest skyscrapers into the cardboard construction world.

This project with third graders took on many layers.
-Learning to research, looking

[caption id="attachment_545" align="alignleft" width="225"] One World Trade Center Freedom Tower[/caption]

for specific facts
-Manipulating and studying models in Sketchup
-Understanding and calculating scale, 200 feet in real life equaled one foot of cardboard
-Engineering of a free-standing structure
-Creativity and style
-Developing perseverance and stamina when the best laid plans fall flat, literally

Some projects came together much better than others. We are dedicating one final class period to our architecture next week. At that time, we will sit down and take a hard look at what went well and what did not go well. Not all buildings are are going to stand as well as this version of the Willis Tower in Chicago. The biggest challenge will be for the kids to tell me why their building experience went well or what could have gone better. They are just third graders. If we don't give them the chance to try projects like this and experience the trials and tribulations of collaboration then we can't expect it just to naturally happen.

The Joy of Reading: "Happy" by Pharell Williams

I love playing this song for my students. It was only natural to mash up some Discovery Education footage from some of my favorite story videos to demonstrate the true joy that lies in reading.

Be happy my friends.

Fix your grammar

From the geniuses who brought us the best tool ever for stamping out vertical video syndrome comes "Fix your grammar."

We can make all of the excuses we want for why such terrible grammar is perpetuated not only across the Internet but by an alarming amount of of our society. Here are a handful of funny reminders for all of us and especially our older students.

Enjoy...and hope with me a sequel is in the works directed at knocking "I seen" from the world's lexicon for good.